Kenshin's Magic Flute
by weland
Summary: AU. Kenshin, a master of the mystical art of spinning tops to subdue supernatural creatures, has been mistaken for one himself. How will he and his newly orphaned friend Kaoru clear his name?
1. Prologue

Prologue

The hero of this story is an outsider to the people of the community, as all heroes are. It's practically a requirement. There's always something mystical about a stranger (or an orphan) who for reasons that are never, ever explained settles in the midst of his hosts. He has no ties to anyone we know, so absolutely anything can happen and the only one affected will be him.

But people like a good yarn, and by nature and love of cosmic ornamentation insist on knitting more strands with the one pure strand of truth until you have a warm blanket to curl up under on cold nights. And all from that the very first row made from the true strand, unto which all the other strands have been added.

By the time anything happens, it's been awhile and people are just becoming accustomed to his presence….

Preview of Chapter 1:

And on that very same path, Kenshin the orphan rode into the village behind Niitsu Kakunoshin, the thirteenth Seijurou Hiko, the potter. (He insisted that was his trade, but his master had been a very odd fellow and had singled him out for special arms training. With what we knew of the twelfth one, it's no wonder his apprentice turned to heavy drinking once his mentor passed on.)


	2. Kenshin's Welcome

Disclaimer: I'm being creative with characters that I didn't make up and don't belong to me.

And on that very same path, Kenshin the orphan rode into the village pillion behind Seijurou Hiko, the potter. (He insisted that was his trade, but his master had been a very odd fellow and had singled him out for special arms training. With what we knew of his master, it's no wonder that his apprentice turned to heavy drinking once his mentor passed on.)

At least, everyone would assume he was an orphan, once the story spread how some fishermen had seen smoke drifting from the unpopulated part of the peninsula. They had panicked when they investigated and saw a battlefield strewn with corpses of man and beast, strewn with hacked and burnt weapons and wagons. The youngest member of the party, a boy named Sano, set a record running back to the village yelling at the top of his lungs for help.

The men in the local eatery had rushed to the scene brandishing their farming tools. Okina, the village grandfather grabbed his deceased sister's grandson, Aoshi and they calmly hitched up his wagon and moseyed after them, after stopping by the potter's hut.

Leaving Aoshi holding the reins, he clambered down and went around back to the kiln, where the potter was sitting in his absurd, long white cloak watching the smoke curl out, a jug of sake next to him.

"Hiko-kun!" he said. "Apparently there's some big to-do up the road. A bunch of us are going up to find out and see what we can do. Coming?"

The heavily muscled figure on the log across from him grunted.

Okina puffed on his pipe. "There's probably folks in danger. Some of the fishermen found the remains of a battlefield. Don't know how much is left, though. Sure could use your incomparable wisdom in sorting it out."

Another grunt.

"They all left running. They're bound to get there breathless and exhausted. I've got my wagon all hitched. It wouldn't do for you to arrive in anything else but style."

"I'll consider it," the figure grunted, still not turning around.

Okina chuckled and turned away.

"Is he coming?" Aoshi asked as he climbed back up.

"Yep. Get in the back. Of course, we'll have to wait a bit for him to make up his mind. I've appealed to his towering self-opinion, so it shouldn't be too long."

He chuckled again and sat back. Aoshi sat motionless and closed his eyes in the direction of the back of the wagon. The horse shifted its weight.

"For your pains," he said, offering a jug of sake as Seijurou Hiko alighted beside him on the bench.

He grunted again. "At least it's not a total loss."

As Okina had predicted, the wagon and the rest of the formerly running, now-flagging villagers arrived at about the same time.

Seijurou, the potter, automatically started assigning areas and tasks to the villagers and fishermen. He announced that he was going to do a bit of scouting.

There was little more than clean-up. The bodies, all wearing insignia they'd never seen before, were piled atop the wood bits of weapons – once the metal parts had been removed – and remains of wagons and set alight. No one would pass up some free, previously mined and refined metal. It would be easy enough to get the blacksmith to reshape it into something more pertinent to their village life and there was plenty of it to go around.

Still, heaping everything and determining that they could not recognize the wagon contents took a while. Okina had set Aoshi to collecting every scrap of cloth and piling it on the pyre. One of the more frugally minded fisherman declared that they could use the clothing worn by the fallen. Okina promptly stomped that out, reminding how sacrilegious despoiling the deceased would be and then pointing out, after meeting protests, that it would help the cremation process.

"Besides, the quicker we get rid of the bodies decently, the sooner their ghosts will leave." No one protested further.

Once the mound was complete, they stood around it and lit it. As the flames began to lick above their heads, not a few people threw up once they realized that the stench was burning human flesh. Aoshi crept to his great-uncle pale and wiping his mouth; and declared he would never eat meat again. Okina laughed and put his arm around his grand-nephew's shoulders as they watched the flames.

The sound of a horse drew their attention. Eyes bugged out as they spied the thirteenth Seijurou Hiko riding a horse with a red-haired, pink clad child seated in front of him, two intersecting cuts bleeding on its left cheek.

"A kid, Hiko-kun?" called Okina.

"A girl?" Aoshi scoffed.

Seijurou grunted. "I found _him_ crawling from under an upturned boat down on the west side."

"A boat!" cheered the fishermen. "A new boat!"

"And it's free!"

"It's not seaworthy, nor reparable. A good portion of it has been hacked and skewered beyond belief." He swung his leg over the horse and landed silently on the ground. "Look at this," he said, as he handed a folded cloth to Okina.

Okina shifted his pipe and caught it handily. Pursing his lips he shook it out. His eyes bugged out as he looked at the crest. His jaw dropped open and the pipe fell out as he turned to the potter.

"Yes, really. Unbelievable, isn't it."

"So what are you going to do with him?" he breathed, lowering the cloth.

"I've needed an apprentice, and everyone has refused to take me up on my very generous offer of training. I don't know any masters as excellent as I, let alone better."

_That's because you've said you won't teach your arms skills, just pottery making. I won't get stronger that way_, Aoshi thought at him through hardened eyes.

"I'll see you back in town after you finish cleaning up," he declared. "You, in back," he told the boy before he climbed back on, wheeled the horse around and trotted out of sight.

"Where'd he get a horse?"

"Wish I had one!"

"What'd you do with one? You're a fisherman!"

"How come he doesn't have to do any of the dirty work? Who is that kid anyway?"

"Cuz he's super lazy. I wouldn't want a master like that."

"That's cuz you _are_ a master like that. I've heard your apprentices talking."

"Hey! At least I'm actually helping. Seijurou-san hasn't even been here. He's been off gallivanting pretending to be a hero while we do all the real work."

"Touché."

"That kid? You don't want to know. Pray you never find out. Your life will be much simpler that way."

And so Kenshin Himura, from a long line of distinguished Himuras, the hereditary bodyguards of the daimyo, with his own crest and separate destiny, arrived unceremoniously and unheralded into a remote, nameless village, on a deserted street.


	3. Hiko

Disclaimer: I do not own Rurouni Kenshin. Nuff said.

* * *

"My lord, how should this one address your greatness?" the boy asked the potter. It was a long ride back to the village.

"You may call me 'shishou'."

" 'Shishou?'" The boy's violet eyes looked up into the man's dark brown ones, which were focused on the distance before them.

"Yes. You now have the honor of being apprenticed to the greatest man in this village, let alone the world."

The boy looked down again.

"Shishou, this one begs your greatness to condescend to tell him why this one's name is not suitable."

One of the man's eyebrows shot up. "While I would never say that your real name 'Shinta' is wussy or wimpy, it's no name at all for _my_ apprentice. It will also keep you safer if people don't know your real name; what they don't know, they can't tell."

The boy looked down again and fiddled with his unassuming spinning top. "Will you tell this one what happened to everyone that was charged with bringing this one here?"

"They died," he replied tersely.

"All of…" the boy trailed off in alarm.

"Yes. Your family?"

The boy's eyes widened, focused on nothing. "They were charged with conveying this one safely away, though this one confesses that he does not understand the reason. Katsura-san said that this one should spin his top should he ever encounter danger."

"Top?" the man said suddenly.

The boy held it up for inspection. "This one."

The man frowned as he glanced down at it in the boy's extended hand. "You must never show it to anyone again, let alone play with it."

"But it is this one's favorite…" he trailed off, quelled by the hard look from a hard face atop a hard body.

"Baka deshi, never. Ever."

There were no sounds but the rustle of the man's cloak and the step of the horse.

"They had nothing," the boy said in little more than a whisper, slumped against his guardian. "They all died because this one went away."

"Did they tell you to flee in advance of them while they stayed to fight?" the man asked quietly

"Y-yes, sir. I should have stayed!" he began to wail. "The blame for their destruction rests upon this one!"

"Don't be ridiculous. It's self-centered of you to think that it's your fault. They died to protect you. You could not have prevented it. And that's the end of this matter." The man's voice was gruff.

"Y-yes, sir." _That doesn't change the fact that this one compassed their deaths!_ the boy thought.

The man continued more gently. "I'll protect you while I teach you how to protect yourself." He smirked. "Whoever's chasing you will find it much more difficult to kill me than those other people."

* * *

"Is that this one's new home?"

Yes. The man briefly identified the various areas and necessaries.

The boy looked overwhelmed.

The man relented. "You can play with your top if you go deep into the woods."

The boy started to look hopeful. The top had always been his one comfort and he would die before admitting that it was soothing to him; the gentle spin and the low musical tone it produced brushed every worry away, leaving only resolution.

"Tonight, rest."

He had brought the boy home, he mused, the boy with the crest of ginger over dragon scales. I wonder whether he knows its significance. I'll get him clothes tomorrow, he thought as he took a long swig from the sake bottle.

* * *

A pile of something landed on top of him.

"Change into these," ordered Hiko.

Kenshin sat up and held out the clothes his new master had provided. He got out of bed and began to dress.

"What do you know about Katsura-san?" Hiko said carefully.

"He was this one's master before," Kenshin replied, half-focused on changing.

"Hmm. Do you know what a daimyo is?"

"No. Katsura-san never mentioned them. This one was fostered to Katsura-san at a tender age," he explained when he saw his new master's quizzical look, "until he saw fit to send this one away."

"What is your family?"

"Himura."

"Kenshin no baka, the man who raised you, Katsura-san, is the daimyo, the ruler of this province, a wise and powerful man. The Himura-han has always been his bodyguards."

"Body…guard?" the boy breathed weakly, looking at Hiko anxiously.

"Charged with protecting him with their very life," Hiko continued. "You are much too young to be a bodyguard, but it seems his approach is to raise their children so as to form a strong bond between bodyguard and lord." He paused.

"Perhaps, shishou, you could reconcile yourself to bestowing upon this one the gift of the knowledge why this one's lord sent him away?"

"You don't know?"

The boy shook his head.

"And why you survived when everyone else was slain?" he asked as he started making the fire.

The boy nodded.

"I can think of a number of explanations. Basically he's trying to keep you safe from something or he's tired of you. Probably the former; I can't imagine him being purely heartless. He's reasonable man. There's always a reason for his actions, a good one.

"What? You think I know him?" he asked, when he saw Kenshin frozen wide-eyed like a deer that had spotted a hunter. "Not to speak to, but I know of him and how he thinks. Anyway, what's he guarding you against, whether demons, rebels against the daimyo, assassins, or another daimyo, is unknown. I haven't asked him.

"If your family was wiped out, your existence is threatened and he can't be expected to guard you himself and/or without bodyguards, in which case he needs you to survive to adulthood so you can reestablish the Himura-han. I doubt that explanation. It would show your family to be very poor bodyguards, letting themselves all get killed so easily and leaving your lord defenseless.

"Or perhaps your family and he are too busy with some disaster to protect you.

"I think protecting you from demons until you're old enough is the most likely. Heh. He's lucky he got me."

He smirked. "Is this starting to make sense to you?" He handed the boy a bowl of reheated soup.

The boy nodded.

"In any case, he's trying to protect you. Why he sent you out here is mysterious, that I doubt that this was your final destination. Don't mention Katsura-san; get it?"

"Got it," the boy said, trying the grossly informal speech on his tongue.

"Good."

* * *

No one had actually seen Kenshin ride into the village, so rather than one grand, simultaneous introduction to the villagers, they began to encounter him in twos and threes over the following months as he ran errands for Hiko. They all whispered to each other their responses to him, which more or less ran thus:

"There he is!"

"I heard Hiko's taken him in; he's finally taken an apprentice!"

"Is it really a boy? He's so tiny!"

"Look how long his hair is!"

"He's so pale."

"What about that red-hair? That can't be natural."

His first encounter puzzled him. The second alarmed him, and by the fourth he was resigned to their unanimous opinion. He began to ignore them and to notice that they spoke of supernatural creatures often. When he mentioned to Hiko how often they spoke of demons, he set him to practicing stealth and to gathering information. In this way he found that it was just him that inspired their tales of the demonic.

Soon they no longer kept so secretive, but to speak together openly. He started to notice shoppers and shopkeepers talking about supernatural creatures, especially something called the _saru mawashi_, which he gathered, was the local, resident deity.

The sake house was a prime information mill. He could hear any legend he cared to, and some that he would eventually not.

As it happened, on this occasion he was purchasing sake for Hiko from the barkeeper, the only one permitted in the village by tradition to dispense alcohol to private individuals for their later, private consumption. The barkeeper's wife, feeling generous, put a bowl of soup in front of him. As he sipped it, he realized that the other clients were talking about the mysterious massacre, that had necessitated his relocation to the village.

"I still think it's too strange," said one, "that the entire party was wiped out with no traces, and them heavily armed too."

"Did any of you see the enemy soldiers' bodies?"

"No," said the first. "Thought that was a mite odd, that. Not one soldier. They all wore the same crest, double cloves."

"Infighting?" suggested another.

"Nah," said a fourth. "Okina says he checked out the bodies and the wounds were too weird, couldn't have been made by any of the weapons we found."

"Got a good plow out of them, though," sighed the second. "So did he say what killed them?"

"Nah. Would've been good if'n he had. But if it wasn't enemy soldiers and it wasn't each other, it's gotta be demons."

"Demons?" everyone gasped, including the barkeeper's wife.

"Yeah, only explanation."

"What kind?" someone asked, getting excited.

"Dunno."

"Oni!"

"Kitsune!"

"Kappa!"

"Ghosts!"

"Saru mawashi!"

"Not saru mawashi, you idiot," said someone immediately, bashing the speaker on the head with his fist. "It's a benevolent and musical creature, not a destructive one."

"That doesn't keep it from mischief and tricks," said another.

"Yeah, but that's not destructive."

_That's not much of a guardian deity_, thought Kenshin, putting the bowl down and getting up, _if it plays tricks on the people it's supposed to be protecting. _He bowed to the barkeeper's wife, who was sweeping nearby as he went out. _I should ask shishou about the saru mawashi. _A sale across the street on vegetables distracted him and he forgot his resolution.

* * *

Over the following months and years, the regulars at the bar gossiped. In their drunken state they began to speculate on the origins of their newest resident. One man reported that the potter had found the boy under a boat.

"Like a shell!" cried someone else, very drunk.

The legend started building from there, that Kenshin was hatched full-grown from a huge egg that had washed up on the famous beach. There began to be whispers that the only fair-haired person in a town and province of black-haired people was a sea-demon, a shojo in particular, because they were little red-headed, man-shaped monsters with an affinity for alcohol, and everyone had seen him buying alcohol.

Okina, sitting in the bar one night, pointed out that the boy was buying it for Hiko, not himself, and everyone knew Hiko was famous for liking his drink. "He's human, right enough. Just you forget this demon-talk."

That was all well and good, but the idea of a real demon infiltrating their quiet lives was too exciting a possibility to forget, too delicious to put aside.

So they took the story home and told their wives, who told it to their friends, whence it was circulated by the shopkeepers in the village proper, where it was overheard by their respective children. The story now noted the fact that Kenshin was extremely small, like a small woman, far below normal height, which could not be normal, maybe not even human!

"So how'd he get that weird scar on his cheek, the one like a cross?" someone asked on another night in the bar.

"Hiko said he got it from the wreckage of the boat."

But months later when the question was asked again, someone else insisted that there wasn't a boat, but a giant eggshell, and that he had gotten it when hatching. A few years later everyone knew that getting the scar was necessary to hatch, because the demon had to draw its blood and apply it to the inside of the shell so that it would weaken enough to hatch the monster.

By this time, Kenshin and Hiko had begun to disappear for extended periods. People began to get suspicious. Hiko never deigned to answer their questions, and Kenshin's answers that they had begun his training in self-defense, pre-emptive strikes and efficient offense were clearly suspect.

He was around so little that on the rare occasion when he could get to town, other customers would turn their backs on him. Even the shopkeepers began to act uneasy when he made his purchases.

* * *

Author's note: The shojo is a real Japanese mythological creature that originated in China. Check out at en. wikipedia. org/ wiki/ ListoflegendarycreaturesinJapanesemythology or www. obakemono. com/ obake/ shojo/ (don't forget to remove the spaces!) They are also known for their drunken behavior, merrymaking and dancing, which is out of character for even Hiko, let alone Kenshin. Imagine a jolly Hiko!

The saru mawashi is not as legendary as I make it out to be in this story. It literally means "monkey trainer" and refers to real class of street performers that entertain people with their trained monkey. In this story the monkey and trainer will be combined into a single, supernatural creature. (See www. artelino. com/ articles/ japanesemythology. asp

I also do not own any lines that were ever delivered by Danny Kaye and Basil Rathbone.


End file.
